April 2023

A good attendance at SMSA Pitt St Sydney for the April 2023 meeting.

Steve, Wayne, Alex, David, Stuart, Geoff + jitsi attendees.

Alex showed his latest Tech Tips then discussed GRBL and CNC.  

CNC   Start with a design drawing of what you want to make  (eg panel with cutouts) .  Use CAM software on PC the generate a GCode istructions file.  GCode is basically the list of XY co-ordinates of the path the CNC head will travel, and Z instructions for cutting depth.  See below the stepper motor shield that plugs onto an arduino uno.  The arduino runs 'grbl' which translates GCode instructions into the electrical pulse trains that move the steppers.

Steve showed a manual method of cutting slots into plastic panels using drill press and Dremel router table.  The 4 edges of the cut out windows are defined by clamping ends stops at the precise dimensions.

David showed us how to extract a free LiOn battery from discarded vapes.  He made an adapter and turned it into a torch.

Wayne demonstrated 'scopy' part 2 Wireless.  So the signal acquired by a pi pico is sent wirelessly via wifi to an android smart phone.  The scopy app on android displays an audio oscilloscope.  Good to 500k samples/sec and includes a logic analyser to 12Mhz.

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